Storm has passed, now for the calm

Fierce forks of lightning and portentous thunderclaps assailed the tranquil Sydney spring last night, and to those of a religious turn of mind, such as Jonathan Edwards, the Creeping Jesus of the sand pit, there might well have been something almost Biblical about it: in the light of Cathy Freeman's sudden ascension to become this land's Messiah, one might pick up an echo of the climactic conditions at Golgotha.

To the less fanciful, it looks like the storm before the calm. The momentum has faded for now from these great Games, and although it will build again at the weekend, it will not be possible to recreate the level of emotion and excitement of Monday night. The climax has come and gone, and for all that the earth moved too violently for Mr Richter to record, the problem dramatically speaking, as that one-time sprinter turned performing playwright Lord Archer will agree, is that it came too soon.

Yesterday, before the storm, we were diverted by CJ Hunter's richly comic press conference. A colleague offered me $A1000 (about £400) to ask a question predicated on my confusing the drugs cheat shot putter with TJ Hooker. Nerve failed, alas, but in the event the presence of OJ lawyer Johnnie Cochrane rendered any contrived facetiousness quite unnecessary.

Today, the sun is out again and CJ's missus, Marion Jones, has recovered from her brief, tearful appearance before the world's media enough to progress sedately towards a 200 metres title that seems a certainty. Not that you would guess this from watching Channel 7, the Olympic station, which seems to be portraying the event as a two way battle between Jones and Cathy Freeman. In truth, Freeman will do well to make the final, let alone win a minor medal.

Even more overhyped has been Australia's best male sprinter - an impressive-sounding accolade roughly equivalent to 'London Underground's cleverest executive' - Matt Shirvington, who would have struggled on current form to beat the late Mama Cass over any distance. After failing to qualify automatically for the next round of the 200m, the poor boy told a sagely-nodding interviewer from Channel 7, which has presented him to the nation as a medal prospect, that he had just risen from his bed to which he took after his 100m failure suffering from the symptoms of 'flu.

I know how he feels. After awaking before dawn with thumping eyes and aching limbs, I spent the morning lapsing into and out of feverish nightmares. One involved Lord Archer explaining in a thick Aussie brogue to Olympic Sunrise presenters Andrew, a giggling imbecile next to whom Keith Chegwin might be the late Richard Dimbleby, and Jo, a shockingly winsome blonde who looks a bit like Cate Blanchett (Cate Blanchett in a fairground House of Mirrors), how he won 100m gold in each Games from 1960 to 1984; but that now (and, being no Jungian, I can't work out the significance of this detail) he is planning to take up the pole vault.